Community Art Therapy program brings college art therapy students into schools

Sunday

Apr 7, 2013 at 3:00 PM

By Arlene BachanovDaily Telegram Special Writer

At the Montessori Children’s House in Adrian on a recent Friday morning, a little boy was seated at a table pressing his fingers into a lump of clay, turning the clay into his version of a dinosaur footprint.

“What do you think a dinosaur likes to do?” asked the Adrian College student sitting at the kid-sized table with the boy and another child in the class.

“Eat,” the boy replied.

“Do they ... like to go swimming?”

“No!”

“Do they ... go to the movies?” “No!”

“Do they ... jump rope?”

“No!”

“So what do they do?”

“Eat!”

“What do they eat? Do they eat popcorn?”

“No!”

Such conversations about what the Montessori children and the college students were making with their clay were going on at each table engaged in the activity in teacher Debra Cagle’s class of 3- to 6-year-olds. Similar discussions were occurring next door in teacher Mikie Rion’s class between the Adrian College students there and the youngsters with whom they were working.

The college students, eight in all, are art therapy students participating in Community Art Therapy, a program in which they work with a different local agency each semester. Each student is responsible for coming up with an art project to be carried out during one of the class’s weekly visits.

For the Montessori children, each project helps develop important skills. The masks the children created one week helped them learn about expressing feelings, for example, while another week’s “sensory box” activity was all about distinguishing between different textures. And this particular week’s clay project was designed to not only help the children be expressive but also to develop their motor skills and even their sense of smell.

The various organizations that participate in CAT have the benefit of the students’ expertise in leading art activities, while the students gain valuable experience in working with different types of people. To date, besides the Montessori school, the Community Art Therapy program has spent time at places including the Boys and Girls Club of Lenawee County, the Catherine Cobb shelter, the HOPE Community Center, the Maurice Spear Campus and the Lenawee Medical Care Facility.

Such variety means that over the course of the students’ college careers, “they get a lot of experience in different settings,” said Shannon Scott-Miller of the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, one of two art therapists overseeing the Adrian College students. And while working with Montessori children may seem like a far cry from working with Alzheimer’s patients at the Lenawee Medical Care Facility or with developmentally disabled adults at the HOPE Center, it’s an important look at children who are at an age-appropriate level of development, according to Scott-Miller.

“Plus,” she said, laughing, “if you can work with children this age, you can work with anybody.” After all, she added, the experience teaches budding art therapists to set boundaries, learn to help children problem-solve and “deal with the occasional meltdown.”

According to Scott-Miller, working with CAT will be valuable to her students when they go on to graduate school.

“I like the idea that they get the hands-on beforehand,” she said. “When they get to graduate school they’ve already learned how to deal with all sorts of situations. I’ve not seen that done in other (undergraduate) programs.”

The students “get a front-row seat into what an art therapist does,” said Adrian College art professor Pi Benio. “They get to work with different populations, and they have to figure out what interests (each group) and motivates them. They get to see two different art therapists with very different backgrounds and approaches. And on the flip side, these organizations get the benefit of art therapy. ... The CAT program has been a really awesome program for all sides.”

Adrian College senior Melanie Bott of Clinton is on her fourth CAT internship, having previously worked with people at the HOPE Center, the Lenawee Medical Care Facility and the Maurice Spear Campus.

“This one (at the Montessori school) is good for learning the basics of art therapy,” she said. “The environment is just right. It’s calm and quiet. ... It’s helpful to be able to focus on just the interaction and the art.”

Bott said she’s finding working with the very young Montessori children very rewarding.

“They want to jump in and they’re always super-eager to get started,” she said. And, she added, for the children “it’s not about the finished product. They’re not self-conscious at all. To them, anything they make is going to be awesome.”

The Montessori children “get a lot out of this,” said another CAT intern, sophomore Lindsey Bunio of Garden City. While she was in high school, Bunio originally thought she might want to go into art education, but then her psychology teacher suggested she think about being an art therapist. To her, it was a perfect blend of her two main interests: art and psychology. “I thought it was the greatest invention ever,” she said.

As she talked, a little boy came up and hugged her, and she said hi to him and hugged him back. Such interactions are among the changes the CAT students have seen in their little artists since the semester began.

“At first the kids were quiet,” Bunio said, “and then they got more comfortable with us. The art definitely gets them more comfortable.”

After the hourlong class concludes each Friday, Scott-Miller leads her students through some processing time, asking how things went that day and what could have been done differently.

This particular Friday, students and art therapist squeezed into a small room in the school’s office for a conversation that ranged from a general discussion of how the children reacted to the day’s project to specific problem areas and behavioral issues. With each of the latter, Scott-Miller asked the students why the children might have done that and guided the group through a conversation about how to solve such problems.

Back in Cagle’s classroom, the preprimary teacher said she and her colleagues see the CAT program as a win-win situation. The college students “are getting some great hands-on, and our children are getting the benefit. It has just been the best partnership,” she said.

She smiled as a few of her students crowded around her to offer their perspective on their adventures with clay.

“I was trying to make three thousands Play-Doh,” said 5-year-old Ben Thompson of Sand Creek. What did he make? “A worm and a fish and a shark and a pencil and a Skechers shoe.”

Five-year-old Mathias Dalton of Adrian also made a pencil and a shoe. “You can make all kinds of stuff,” he said, before adding that he had smelled his clay and it smelled like strawberries.

And then there was 4-year-old Leila Morris of Tecumseh, whose friends had given her some of their clay so she could mix the various colors up. “I made a circle gate so the horses can run inside of it,” she announced proudly.